Thursday, 11 October 2012

Organisational Response to Sexual Violence in Activist Groups, Part 2: Seven Common Mistakes

Trigger Warning: This post discusses Sexual Assault

Since the events
covered in the last post, the issue of sexual violence in activist circles has
very much come into the fore. A number of attacks have come to light and a lot
of people have been wrestling with the hard fact of sexual predators in the scene.

I've been on the
very edges of this, trying to make some responsible contribution and
prevent other people being affected by some of the mistakes that effected me. In fact, the previous blog post was originally written as a discussion
document for a group in Glasgow.

In light of all
this, I've decided to write a second post, on the most common mistakes and
pitfalls I've noticed in activist organisations trying to deal with these issues. Here are my top 7 common mistakes to avoid:

Not having a policy.

The most basic mistake
is not to have a policy. Perhaps you hope you will never need one and I
certainly hope you are right. The fact is however, that sexual violence is as
prevalent amongst the activist community as it is in wider society and failing
to prepare will certainly not protect you from having to deal with it.

Perhaps you don’t
feel qualified to write one. This is natural enough, but think about it: if sexual
violence is a difficult subject to broach now, how much harder will it be to
deal with when it happens. Better to think it through now and be prepared.

Ill defined Responsibilities

Activist spaces
are often places where new methods and structures of organisation are pioneered
and experimented with. This can mean a very loose structure where
responsibility and decision making is shared. The flip side of this is that
sometimes no one takes responsibility and important issues fall through the
cracks.

It is not
acceptable for anyone’s safety to be left up to chance.

Regardless of
organisational structure: It should always be clear to all participants, who
they should speak to if they feel uncomfortable with someone’s presence or
behaviour or if they have information which may be important to the safety of
others.

That person
tasked with this role should be competent to carry out the task, should be
clear about the response required and should be supported to carry it out.

Open/large meetings

Some activist
spaces make decisions in large open meetings. These can be empowering and fun
but also unpredictable and intimidating.

Large open
meetings are not safe places to disclose personal, sensitive or painful
information and it should go without saying that survivors should not be
expected to bring instances of sexual assault in activist spaces to meetings
like this.

Not believing women who report a
sexual assault

This is possibly
the single most damaging mistake. The worst possible thing you can do to
someone who has been sexually assaulted is to not believe her.

Hearing "both sides”

Activists like to
feel they are fair. They don’t like to jump to conclusions about people. A common
error is to attempt to achieve fairness by making space for a person accused of
sexual assault, harassment or rape a “right of reply”

It should be
obvious that this is inconsistent with point 4, but since a surprising number
of people have trouble with this, I’ll go into more depth.

What “hearing
both sides” amounts to is setting up a quasi judicial process, within an
activist group. This is not something any activist group is really qualified to
do, and neither should they try.

The reason a real
court adopts this approach is that they have a responsibility to ascertain
exactly what happened, beyond reasonable doubt and the power to send someone to
prison.

Putting aside the
woefully low conviction rate for rape, which is a subject for another day,
consider this: as an activist group, do you have the same power or the same
responsibility?

You don't of course. Your only responsibility in this situation is to keep your own members
safe and your only real sanction against people who threaten that safety is to
exclude them from your events.

Even if we accept
the judicial “hear both sides” type approach from the legal system therefore,
it doesn't follow that we need to adopt it ourselves.

More sensible and
pragmatic then, given that you will NEVER know for an absolute certainty
what went on between two other people in private, is to work from the
understanding that false accusations are vanishingly rare.

Believe the
survivor, thank her for bringing this important public safety information to
your attention and then act on it as appropriate, hopefully in line with her wishes and the
sensible policy you already drew up.

Letting everyone having their say

It’s understandable
that when information about a sexual assault comes out, everyone is shocked and
upset. They want to know details of what happened and they want to have their say. This
is particularly true of those who are close friends or comrades of the
perpetrator.

It’s
understandable that they want these things, but they should never be allowed to
have it. Any conversation about the rights and wrongs of a particular incident
puts the word of the survivor up for question and this cannot be tolerated.

Plus, if you allow
everyone to have a say, rape culture will tend to rear its ugly head and
all sorts of hurtful and wrong headed stuff will be said.

This is where
that written policy is so important, because you can point to it and say

“Look
this is the policy. We agreed democratically to adopt this and now we will have to implement it.”

This hopefully takes some of the heat out of the situation and
gets everyone people to back off before they inadvertently and for the most
understandable of reasons, fuck things up worse than they already are.

8. So, What should
we be doing instead?

This is a
question, no one person is qualified to answer in full.

The truth is that
collectively we need to improve our response to these situations. I would like
to us build a consensus across the movement on some basic principles that
should, in all cases govern a response, adopting a survivor centred approach.

I would also like
to see some formal lines of coordination between different activist groups,
similar to the pubwatch scheme so that if someone has been a sexual
predator in one activist group, it shouldn't be possible for them to simply
move on to the next.

The fractured and
sectarian nature of some of our scene is a major structural weakness, but in
this case it is a danger to our members as well.

A meeting on
dealing with sexual violence in activist groups is due to take place at the
London Anarchist Bookfair on the 27th October. Let’s hope something
concrete comes out of it.